We Are Family
by Ressick
Summary: Sofia gives her mom a present. Slightly AU, not for Mark fans.


Disclaimer: It all belongs to Shonda. More Calzona, please? We love our folded pizza.

A/N1: Sort of canon – post season 8 finale, but Mark died, Lexie lived. My knowledge of canon since Brookegate is mostly fanfic and youtube based, so if there's a big error, just pretend it's AU. Also, I haven't taken Spanish in 12 years, so be kind and just point out what I did wrong, please, so I can fix it. Not for Mark fans.

A/N2: First person present tense? Where the hell did that come from?

X-X-X-X-X-X

Family is complicated. And when your family includes half the staff of Seattle Grace-Mercy West Hospital, your family is full of people who can suture every cut, set every broken bone, all while scolding you about whatever foolish thing you did to hurt yourself – whether it's falling off your bike or a roller skating accident or getting hit in the head with a softball in gym class. But it's how I've grown up, all I know. A life full of aunts and uncles that don't share a drop of blood, a life full of gossip in the cafeteria, of pudding cups and doing homework at the nurses stations when mom or mama's surgeries run long, of playing with the kids on mom's ward – watching them get well and go home or die and be buried.

Mom and mama think I don't know as much as I do. Like I said, people gossip here. A lot. They tone it down when I'm around, watch their language, but I'm here so much sometimes they don't notice me. Or when I was little I'd tuck myself away with a book in a corner and they'd never see me. And a lot of them didn't know I could spell when they'd try to spell out what the gossip was. Be real. My mothers are both surgeons. My father was a surgeon. All my favorite aunts and uncles are highly intelligent, driven people. I learned my letters in the peds ward, from Sesame Street, and Auntie Yang's complete inability to relate to children so instead she taught me things – letters and numbers and how to suture a banana. I learned to spell from medical dictionaries and drug references and all the books Aunt Lexie kept in her locker for me.

I remember once, I must have been about twelve, and Mama was off at an orthopedic conference in Boston for a week. I broke my arm rollerblading, really badly, and mom called the ambulance, rode with me to the hospital, held my good hand through everything she could, until they had to wheel me into the OR to pin my bones back together. She was a total wreck. Blamed her heely thing for me getting hurt, instead of my own obsession with speed.

The first time I came out of the general anesthetic, she was there, and looked like she hadn't slept or eaten the entire time. She checked that I was okay, and said she had called Mama, who was on a flight home. I sort of remember this. I was really out of it – I've always been a little sensitive to anesthetic. The second time I came out really slow, but I could hear everything around me. I recognized a couple of familiar voices, Sarah, one of the NICU nurses who knew me as I was one of her early preemie cases, and Maggie, one of the nurses who had helped in the OR when I was delivered. I could hear them flipping through my chart.

"It's times like this I'm glad Sloan is dead," Maggie murmured.

"I know. Robbins is going mad enough as it is; if he was here she wouldn't even be allowed in the room, I bet," Sarah replied.

I knew that my father had not been a popular man. The nurses who had been around a long time always got this _look_ on their face when he came up in conversation. But I had no idea what they were talking about. What did my father have to do with mom being in the room?

"I'm surprised Torres let him be any part of the kiddo's life after what he shouted at Robbins. I'm shocked Robbins didn't actually get one of those bricks of hers and brain the asshole. He deserved it," Maggie said, anger in her voice.

"I know! Who the hell tells a woman whose fiancée is dying on the table that her daughter is nothing, that she's nothing to her own daughter, that he can just screw her fiancée and make another kid? Robbins didn't even want kids before Torres came along but she's loved Sofia from the first ultrasound. Remember when they broke up for awhile over the baby thing? Before the Carter Madison debacle?" Sarah didn't let her voice rise, but I could tell she wanted to. I just laid there, shocked, keeping my eyes closed, glad they'd already removed the heart monitor. I could feel it pounding in my chest.

"God, she was the terror of the peds ward then. Totally heartbroken, Janet said. And Torres wasn't exactly easy to get along with then, either. I had to scrub in with her for this hip replacement, I thought she'd bite my head off the whole time."

"Yeah. I know they've had the paperwork for co-parenting since Sof was a baby, but you know in any other hospital they would have ignored Robbins in favor of the biological parent. When Sloan died, a lot of us in NICU breathed a sigh of relief. I think that was one of the fastest second-parent adoptions ever. Robbins didn't wait long. She'd been so scared since Zola was almost taken away, that someone would try to do it to her." Everyone at SGMW knew about the issues with Zola's adoption. No one mentioned it around Aunt Mer or Uncle Derek, even over a decade later, but it was whispered about, sometimes, everyone relieved that it had turned out so well. I'd picked up the basics at about nine, and asked Auntie Yang for the details. It was one of the few times I've seen her upset, telling that story.

"I don't think anyone ever told Torres, honestly." Maggie said that with a touch of disbelief. Gossip really is the wonder of Seattle Grace. It had its own power here. "At first I think they were worried she'd have a setback in her recovery. And then there was that whole co-parenting thing they were trying to balance. And the wedding, and Torres' crazy parents. It was pretty rough in the beginning. Back then, the surgeons were all on Torres' side except Karev. I mean, he's the one who took care of Robbins after the accident, dragged her out of the viewing gallery to stitch up her head, and check her vitals. Everyone else ignored her; we're lucky she didn't drop dead from a subdermal hematoma or something. A couple of her peds nurses tried to check on her, but she barely responded, except to Karev. And then they all seemed happy enough. Or something. But you know that wouldn't have lasted. Sloan was an arrogant ass. Eventually he would have repeated himself in Torres' hearing."

"And then he would have been dead anyway. I would have put money on Torres getting her father's lawyers to try to sever his parental rights within a week, if she didn't kill him outright. You do not speak against Arizona Robbins in this hospital without bringing down the wrath of Callie Torres," Sarah laughed softly at that, and I tried not to smile. It was true. Mama defends us with everything she has, and more than once she's raged against some homophobe who didn't want a lesbian peds surgeon to save their kids' life. Luckily mom and the rest have kept her from actually raging directly at the parents, but it's come close a few times. I think Aunt Miranda actually had to tackle her once. It wasn't pretty, from what I hear.

"Anyway, looks good. I mean, Sof should be up and about pretty soon. I know Torres is the best, but Jenkins isn't bad as a backup, and he did a good job from the x-ray."

"Yeah, we'll have to come back when she's awake. Poor kid. She'll hate having to give up those stupid skates of hers until she's healed."

I heard them leave, and with them gone, the shock and anger took over. Why hadn't anyone ever told me? Or Mama? Why hadn't Mom said anything?

Here's the thing, when you're looking for the closest thing to the truth at Seattle Grace, you go to my Auntie Yang. She's blunt and sarcastic, and unlike most other adults, she won't sugar coat anything, ever. She's completely incapable of lying to me or Zola. She's the one I asked about Zola's adoption – we're practically cousins in this huge weird family, and I was worried she'd be taken away again. She's the one who told me about the Carter Madison that my mom won, and gave up for mama, after I caught sight of mom's résumé. It's kind of crazy to call my own godmother by her last name, but that's just her. The only things she won't tell me about are Christmas and birthday gifts – or from her, Hannukah. She might be an atheist, but she was raised Jewish, and embraces any excuse to get eight gifts for her goddaughters. Or at least that's what she said, in one of the few tender comments I've ever heard come out of her mouth, before she said something about kicking my ass at the dreidel game.

So I went to Auntie Yang to find out about what Maggie and Sarah had said. I knew both had been either in the OR or NICU when I was born, when my mom made me breathe. Mama once said that she gave me life, but my mom gave me breath.

I told her what I had heard. She got this look on her face. Auntie Yang has a lot of faces for things that she doesn't like. There's the face when anyone derides the ability of dyslexics to succeed, or when someone is over emotional, or sloppy logic, or when she has to drink cafeteria coffee. Frequent, familiar dislike. Then there's the things that make her actually mad, like incompetence in medical care or women not getting the recognition they deserve in their field, or worse, when someone looks down at the mixed race/nontraditional families she is a part of – the Grey-Shepherds and Robbins-Torres – and she'll think of her own Jewish stepfather and Korean mother, and just explode. She and mom have gotten so many strange looks when they take me somewhere if Mama isn't with them – the Korean woman and the blonde with a Latina child between them. This was beyond any of that.

I'd confronted her in an on-call room after the end of her shift. She stood, locked the door, and then sat back down, staring at me.

"I don't know whether to kill them, or just be thankful you haven't asked your mom about this first."

I looked at her.

"Yes, he said that. Everyone heard him, it was right before you were born. He and Roller girl got into this shouting match. Your mom knew that your mama would want you protected, saved at all cost. Sloan didn't seem to care beyond that your mama lived. He kept doing this Neanderthal chest-pounding thing about being "the father" like the competence of his sperm made him an actual parent instead of a drunken mistake of your mama's. I think your mom was still in shock or she would have hurt him. He said she was nothing, to you or to Torres. I have no idea how no one ever told. I certainly wasn't going to, not when things had barely calmed down. I figured she should know if Sloan ever started that bullshit up again, but he died before that happened. Which is lucky. I never really liked him, and I knew he'd bring it up again at some point. Your mom didn't deserve to have her role in your life questioned like that, at all." I raised an eyebrow at the last statement. That was practically gushing from my godmother.

I'd heard about my father since I could remember. Everyone talked about his manwhoring, and his talent with a scalpel, and that was about it. I knew he had been my mama's best friend, and at that point in my life I knew I was a very happy accident. My mothers never hid that from me by the time they thought I was old enough to understand. They also knew how much one could learn from SGMW's rumor mill, and didn't want anyone else to tell me how I hadn't been exactly planned. Other same-sex couples do have "known donors" that help them conceive, and yet wasn't exactly what happened with me. But to know that my own father, who no one tried to say anything bad about in my presence, had wanted to disregard my life, and ignore my mom? I started to tear up, and Auntie Yang awkwardly patted my shoulder. Great for honesty, she's not the best for emotional support.

"It's not the best thing to hear, I know. But you have two mothers who love you very much, and that's what matters, Sofia. So buck up. Manwhore isn't around anymore. And they are." I nodded, and she patted my shoulder again, leaving the room and shutting the door behind her. A few minutes Uncle Alex came in, and just pulled me into his arms and held me until I stopped crying. Auntie Yang must have paged him.

For the next six years, I kept quiet about what I had heard. Sometimes I wanted to tell mama, or ask mom. Even when I lost my temper and yelled, I never brought it up. It was something Auntie Yang and Uncle Alex knew about, and that was enough – that they knew I knew. But the day after my eighteenth birthday, I called my abuelo, and asked for his help. Within a month, with all his contacts and money, he had the gift I wanted to give my mom, and my mama.

Let me say that I have learned a lot from both of my mothers. Mama taught me to cook, mom taught me to make my bed. I can make mama's chicken piccata and do a hospital corner to even my grandpa Robbins' satisfaction. From both of them I learned to strive for success, but not to let failure cripple me. They have raised me, and my younger siblings, to be strong. To be a good person in a storm, to love and care and do our very bests. I have never noticed my mom treat me any different than my siblings – my planned siblings, Emilia with whom she shares her blond hair and blue eyes, Tim who takes after my mama with dark eyes and hair. We are an unusual family, to say the least. A mishmash of a bit of genetics and far more pure devotion.

So on a night I knew my brother and sister would both be staying late at school – Tim for show choir and Emilia for soccer practice – while my mothers would be home early, barring disaster, I decided that my gift would include a meal. Mama's kitchen is well-equipped, with even its own pizza oven, and homemade pizza is a staple comfort food for our family. Mama's dough is a recipe she learned from a friend in college, and she mastered her own sauce not long after I was born. I stood at her elbow for years, handing her utensils and ingredients, eventually learning to chop and stir. It is just as I get the pizzas in the oven that my mothers stumble into the house.

"Dinner in twenty minutes!" I shout to them.

My mom appears in the doorway, smiling under her exhaustion. "Thank you, baby girl. It's been a long day. Pizza?"

"Yes, mom. Just put them in," I walk up to her and step into her arms. I inherited the Torres height, and have a good six inches on her, but anytime she hugs me I know I am safe and loved. "I wanted to talk to you and mama tonight. I… err… well, I have a sort of gift, for you. For me too, but I did it for you."

She steps back, her arms still loose around me. "Alright," she peers up at me, curiosity on her face. "Do you want to talk before or after dinner?"

I know I should wait until after dinner, but I want to do this. I want mom to know how much I love her, I want mama to understand why I did this. "Well, it's easy to say, and harder to understand. But I want to tell you now." I step back, going over to the kitchen table that's empty but for three place settings and a file folder. I pick it up, my hands clumsy. "I wasn't going to say this to mama, but you need to know. Remember when I broke my arm roller blading? Well, a couple of the nurses, I heard them talking when they thought I was asleep. About what my father said to you, shouted to you, after the accident but before I was born. Everything." My mom pales, a hand going to her mouth. "And I asked Auntie Yang if it was true. I wanted to wait until I could do this, before I told you I knew." I hand her the folder, and she takes it, hands shaking as she reads over the name change paperwork. Sofia Robbin Sloan Torres doesn't exist anymore. I am now legally Sofia Danielle Robbins-Torres, a Robbins-Torres like my brother and sister, Danielle after my grandpa Robbins.

"Oh Sofia. Love, I wish you didn't know that. It doesn't matter anymore," she says, voice breaking. "I love you so much, mija. So much." She sets the paperwork down on the table, pulling me into her arms as she shakes and cries onto my shoulder.

I see mama in the doorway, confusion and worry on her face. "Esta bien, mama. Don't worry. I just, I had to give mom a gift. I think she is okay with it."

"Oh baby, of course I am. I understand, love. I'm so proud of you," I hear from the vicinity of my slightly damp shoulder.

"What did you do, Sofia?" my mama asks, running her hand down mom's back, soothing and gentle.

I gesture to the folder. "I did that, mama. For her, and for me."

Mama flips open the folder and reads. She doesn't pale, in fact her face flushes and she's almost angry. "I don't understand, mija. No comprendo."

I look down at my mom, still clinging to me, though the tears have stopped. "Why don't you tell her why you did this, all of it? It's the only way she'll understand," she says, wiping her eyes, and pulling back, guiding mama into her chair at the table.

"I will," I sniff, "let me get the pizzas out." I step back, watching mom rub mama's shoulders, murmuring to her. I take the pizzas out of the oven to cool, leaving them on the counter for a few minutes before slicing. I sit across from my mama, looking into the eyes so like my own. "When I was in the hospital for my broken arm, at twelve, I heard the nurses talking." Both my mothers huff. When aren't the nurses talking? "They thought I was asleep." With that, I recount what I heard from the nurses, and everything Auntie Yang told me when I asked her. My mama pales with anger, and if Mark Sloan were still alive tonight I don't think he would survive until morning. "I didn't want to carry his name anymore. Mom is my mother, my parent. I won't let anyone take that away from me, or let her doubt she's my mom. No one who said that she was nothing to you, to me, is worth being considered my family. No one who would have let me die is my father. You are my parents, both of you. That's why I did it. Because I'm yours and no one can say otherwise. ¿Entiendes?"

Mama looks at me, tears streaming down her face, clutching mom's hand in hers. "Si, Sofia, I understand." And smiles.

end.


End file.
